s felt as though the earth were rocking under
them. The time for the extinction of Russia had not come; a throb of
fierce emotion passed over the country; the people rose like one man,
and the despot found himself held in check by rude masses of men for
whom death had scant terrors. Koutousoff had a mighty people to support
him, and he would have swept back the horde of spoilers, even if the
winter had not come to his aid. Russia was but a dark country then, as
now, but the conduct of the myriads who dared to die gave a bright
presage for the future. Who can blame the multitudes of Muscovites who
sealed their wild protest with their blood? The common soldiers were
but slaves, yet they would have suffered a degradation worse than
slavery had they succumbed, while, as to the immense body of
people--that nation within a nation--which answered to our upper and
middle classes, they would have tasted the same woes which at length
drove Germany to frenzy and made simple burghers prefer bitter death to
the tyranny of the French. The rulers of Russia have stained her records
foully since the days of 1812, but their worst sins cannot blot out the
memory of the national uprising. Years are but trivial; seventy-six of
them seem a long time; but those who study history broadly know that the
dawn of a better future for Russia showed its first gleam when the
aroused and indignant race rose and went forward to die before the
French cannon. When next Russia rises, it will be against a tyranny only
second to Napoleon's in virulence--it will be against the terror that
rules her now from within; and her success will be applauded by the
world.

The Italians, who first waited and plotted, and then fought desperately
under Garibaldi, had every reason to cry out for freedom. If they had
remained merely whimpering under the Bourbon and Austrian whips, they
would have deserved to be spurned by all who bear the hearts of men.
They were denied the meanest privileges of humanity; they lived in a
fashion which was rather like the violent, oppressed, hideous existence
which men imagine in evil dreams, and at length they struck, and
declared for liberty or annihilation. Perhaps they did not gain much in
the way of immediate material good, but that only makes their splendid
movement the more admirable. They fought for a magnificent idea, and
even now, though the populace have to bear a taxation three times as
great as any known before in their history,